To talk about Gottfried Helnwein is one of the most diffucult situations in life. He's a contemporary legend. His entire life is a legend, he had to struggle against people prejudices and indifference.

Gottfried Helnwein is born in 1948 in Vienna (Austria) in the middle of postwar. His childhood was very sad, people around him was obsessed by the ghosts of war. What changed his life was the first German-language Donald Duck comic book that his father brought home one day."Sentivo di essere appena tornato a casa, in un mondo decente dove uno può essere appiattito da un rullo compressore e perforato dai proiettili senza subire ferite serie, un mondo in cui la gente sembra giusta con becchi gialli e pallini neri al posto del naso. E fu lì che incontrai l'uomo che mi cambiò la vita: Paperino." - Helnwein -"I was back home again, in a decent world where one could get flattened by steam-rollers and perforated by bullets without serious harm. A world in which the people still looked proper, with yellow beaks or black knobs instead of noses. And it was here that I met the man who would forever change my life: Donald Duck." - Helnwein - Per questo nelle sue opere si trovano spesso immagini di fumetti o addirittura interi quadri dedicati a Topolino o Paperino. In tempi difficili e disastrosi come quelli del dopoguerra, l'idea di un mondo fantastico e felice in cui rifugiarsi fu davvero importante per lui e per la sua maturazione artistica.

That's why comics are a strong element in his works. Growing up in a dreary period, he sought refuge in a fantastic world where everybody was happy.

Provocation is the first purpose of his work, even with strong and upsetting images.He still was a teenager when he understood how to mess up indifferent people: during a lesson, Helnwein cut his hand with a razor blade and with his own blood drew a picture of Adolf Hitler, for this outrageous action he was expelled from school. There are two things that people could never bear: blood and nazism. After his expulsion, he joined a group of agitator artists, the Wiener Aktionisten ("Vienna Activists").

The human condition is the subject matter of his paintings, and above all, the condition of child.Growing up in an inflexible catholic school and in a troublesome period, he was constantly in contact with terrifying images of violence. So, denunciation of abuses on innocents became his first purpose.From 1969, Helnwein began to work on a series of hyperrealistic watercolor-paintings of bandaged and wounded children. In "Gemeines Kind" there is a face represented such as a medical drawing; in "Peinlich" there's a defaced child holding a comic book. All wounds heal, soul scars stay forever.

Another famous watercolor-painting is Lebensunwertes Leben, where a child is died poisoned: it's a clear reference to the years of Nazism, where innocents children were poisoned because "they were not worthy of living."

The monochromatic triptych "Epiphany" is also dedicated to Nazism.In "Epiphany I - Adoration of the Magi" there is the Virgin with Child (a not aryan child), surrounded by SS officers. This scene resemble to the Botticelli's Madonna, but in reality Helnwein's painting is based on an old photo, where instead of the Virgin there was Hitler.

The last one, "Epiphany III - Presentation at The Temple", symbol of Jesus presentation, is taken by another old photo. There is a group of defaced war veterans, in particular one man on the right resembles to Hitler, and a little child (Helwein's daughter) lying down on a table.

Helnwein had to struggle before being understood and appreciated: during an expo dedicated to Nazism, some unidentified people put stickers with the words "Degenerate Art" on his paintings. At the opening of an other exhibition in Vienna, his works were confiscated by the police. And, recently, in 1991, a group of German Lutheran pastors, together with Christan Party, start a character assassination campaign against Helnwein, affirming that his paintings contain hidden, subliminal and hypnotic messages. Eventually, Helnwein wins all court-cases.Today, Gottfried Helnwein is one of the few important and appreciated contemporary artists all over the world...